


call a spade a spade

by youcouldmakealife



Series: but always in tandem [27]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 23:45:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9294974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: “I don’t fucking care,” Robbie bites out. “I don’t fucking care if it was once or twice or a hundred fucking times, if it was chicks or dudes, if you did it every fucking second I had my back turned, or—”“Yes you do,” Georgie interrupts quietly, and the worst thing is he’s right.





	

Robbie doesn’t know who throws the gauntlet down first, who to blame for this. Whether it was Georgie kissing him last night, or Robbie asking him to come back to his place, or Robbie giving the ultimatum to fuck him or leave, or Georgie not leaving, or whoever it is that moved first right now.

The thing is, Robbie’s mouth is on Georgie’s and he still doesn’t know who kissed who first, how he got there, what the fuck he’s supposed to do, except of course he knows what to do, he knows that part by rote, muscle memory instead of whatever kind of logic he’s working with, if it isn’t entirely paralyzed right now, which seems likelier and likelier.

Robbie does know how to kiss Georgie. He’s kissed him hundreds of times; thousands, actually. He knows exactly how Georgie likes to be kissed, and Georgie knows the exact same fucking thing about Robbie, and that means they’re on a level playing field, and that’s not right. That can’t be right.

The playing field isn’t as level when Robbie shoves George back towards his room. His couch is closer, far closer, and he’s tempted, but lube’s in the bedroom, and if they’re going to do this, well.

They’re going to fucking do this, that’s inevitable, and Robbie’s always been an all in kind of guy, even when that kind of thinking — feeling, because it isn’t thinking, it’s not, Robbie never _thinks_ , fuck, you’d think he’d have learned his lesson by now — even when that kind of thinking broke his fucking heart.

* 

Robbie doesn’t know how long it takes him to stop crying. He’s breathless by then, head pounding with his pulse, nose running and eyes swollen, face hot, and he wonders how the fuck anyone could do this. Could cry like this. Could let someone make them cry like this.

He’s crouched in the fucking hall of a fucking apartment building in fucking Cleveland, and Georgie’s two fucking doors down and Robbie’s —

Robbie’s never felt further away from anything in his entire goddamn life.

*

Georgie’s laid out on Robbie’s bed, naked and beautiful. He has that sort of marble white musculature you typically see on Greek statues, marred only by freckles Robbie could trace with his eyes shut, or could have. It feels physically painful to look at Georgie, to look at him and not touch him, skin so much hotter to the touch than you’d think, softer. There’s always that split second you always think he’s too perfect, it’s going to be cold marble under your skin, an illusion, but it never is. Not on the surface at least.

“Come here,” Georgie says, and it sounds like a plea.

Robbie goes for his bedside table instead, shifting away from Georgie’s reach, and all Georgie manages is a brush of the pads of his fingertips over the skin of Robbie’s hip. Robbie tries not to shiver and fails. Tries to remember how much he hates Georgie and does a little better at that.

“Fuck knows where’ve you been,” Robbie says, slapping a condom on Georgie’s chest before he opens the bottle of lube.

Georgie doesn’t say anything in response to that. “Can I—” he asks, instead, looking at the lube.

“No,” Robbie says.

The prep’s perfunctory, more than Robbie would usually, than Georgie would _ever_ , always so fucking careful not to hurt him. It burns when Robbie sinks down on his cock, and that’s exactly how it should feel.

“Robbie, fuck,” Georgie says, and Robbie bites into his bottom lip so he doesn’t let himself slip, give Georgie the satisfaction of hearing his own name in Robbie’s mouth.

*

Robbie doesn’t know what to do. About anything. He’s got fifty dollars in his wallet and nowhere to stay until his return flight, because there’s no fucking way he can walk back to Georgie’s door. Georgie didn’t follow him out, and Robbie doesn’t know if he thinks he got out the door before he could follow in anything but his underwear or whether it just didn’t seem worth the effort. 

He needs to move. He needs to get outside. That’s — he can’t think of anything beyond that. 

He needs to move.

*

There’s something about Georgie in him that’s intimate.

Which, no fucking shit, Roberto, a cock in your ass is a little bit more personal than making out, what an amazing insight, but it’s more —

It’s not just that. It’s Georgie’s dick in him, yeah, but it’s also the way Robbie can feel Georgie’s heartbeat pounding beneath his palms where they’re braced on that perfect fucking chest, the way his hands are curved around Robbie’s hips, not tight enough to classify as clutching, but enough that they can steady, guide, assist when Robbie’s thighs start burning, since no exercise is quite the same as bouncing on someone’s dick and it’s not something that Robbie’s done a whole lot of since college.

Anchoring, Robbie guesses would be the word.

Georgie’s looking up at him, eyes blown dark, that rim of gold-green-brown almost invisible around the black of his pupils, his lips red from Robbie’s mouth, Robbie’s teeth, Robbie’s name on his tongue, and Robbie wants to shut him up almost as much as he wants Georgie to keep saying his name. Georgie’s so fucking beautiful and it’s too much, looking at him. Robbie closes his eyes, but that doesn’t help, that makes things worse. With his eyes shut, Robbie feels him even more.

*

Robbie somehow manages to make it outside, lands on a bench by the door to Georgie’s building. It’s raining, the kind of freezing drizzle that could turn into snow at any moment, and Robbie’s ass is wet and cold the second he sits, only going to get colder, but what the fuck else can he do. He doesn’t know this city. After all Robbie’s grand intentions to tour it, their intentions to get out, they mostly spent that week in bed — or more accurately fucking, he guesses, since it also involved living room, dining room, bathroom —

Robbie wonders if Georgie fucked her in their —

It wasn’t ever his bed. He just slept in it more than other people did. Maybe there’s been someone who’s been sleeping in it for even longer. How the fuck is he supposed to know. He doesn’t know anything, clearly.

He should have. He should have fucking known. How stupid can someone fucking be to look at a guy who cheats on every fucking girlfriend he’s ever had with a grin and a shrug and think, ‘He loves me, I’m special, I’m the exception’. 

As stupid as Robbie was. 

He probably deserves this, just for that.

*

Robbie disposes of the condom in his bathroom, washes his hands. Tries not to look in the mirror, but it’s hard not to. He doesn’t take a long time or anything, but he still half expects Georgie to be gone when he gets back, the only sign he was ever there the warmth of the sheets and the marks Robbie saw when he couldn’t help looking at himself, red-rashed beard burn and the dark painful bloom of a bruise in the making where Georgie had set his teeth.

Georgie’s still there, has barely moved except to prop himself up slightly, leaning on his elbow. He’s wearing the chain his mom got him for his Confirmation. He used to only wear it on off-days, afraid it’d break during a game. Robbie doesn’t know when he started wearing it all the time. He wasn’t around for it. Maybe it was for luck, though with the kind of luck he had in Cleveland, he’d think of it more as a jinx if anything.

“When’d you start wearing that necklace?” Robbie asks.

Georgie frowns. “I’ve been wearing it as long as I’ve known you,” he says.

“I thought you didn’t wear it on game days,” Robbie says.

Georgie licks over his bottom lip, almost unconsciously touches the chain where it sits below the hollow of his throat. “I was wearing it when I got traded.”

“And you just kept wearing it?” Robbie asks.

“Yeah,” Georgie says.

“That was _good_ luck?” Robbie asks. Georgie’s been playing better with the Caps, he’ll admit, but _fuck._

“I don’t really believe in luck,” Georgie says, which is true. 

“So—” Robbie says.

Georgie shrugs, jerky. He’s got an answer but it’s not one he’s telling Robbie. Let him have his stupid secrets, Robbie doesn’t care.

“Lie back down?” Georgie asks, and Robbie shouldn’t. 

Robbie doesn’t know why he does. 

*

Robbie has fifty dollars. He has fifty dollars and a credit card sitting at home because it’s for emergencies and he’s fucking stupid and forgetful and he took it out to order a fucking Valentine’s Day gift, irony of all fucking ironies, and he’s in a city he doesn’t know anyone except the guy who recently had his dick in someone else, probably still smells like it.

He’s going to be fucking sick. He retches, but nothing comes out. Even that isn’t working.

He doesn’t have a goddamn thing in this city, but he’s not — he isn’t alone or anything. His phone’s still on airplane mode from the flight, and he flips it off. It lights up in short order: four voicemails, too many texts to count, all Georgie. His eyes start filling again, and he can’t — he’s in fucking public, he can’t —

Robbie calls his mother, and he’s sobbing again before she can say a word beyond hello. He thought he didn’t have anything left in him. He can’t have anything left in him.

“Roberto,” she says. Her voice is so kind. It only makes him cry harder.

He can barely get it out, this ugly, hitching mess, and she buys him a ticket for the next flight back to Boston and doesn’t say a word about the cost. 

*

Georgie always got sleepy after sex, regardless of context. It could be the middle of the day or first thing in the morning or after a damn nap, if they lay post-coital for more a couple seconds his eyes would start drifting closed. If he could use a nap, Robbie would let him sleep, do some course work or whatever, fingers idly carding through the hair falling over Georgie’s face. If there wasn’t time or it’d fuck up his sleep, Robbie would prod him until Georgie, groaning, got himself vertical, at which point he was usually good to go.

Robbie’s only remembering this because this is historically the point Georgie would be falling asleep or Robbie would be poking him until he sat up, but instead he’s looking at Robbie with this steady, alert look that Robbie’s uncomfortable with.

“What,” Robbie says. _What’s so fucking interesting?_ , he wants to say, but he doesn’t want to give Georgie any sort of opening. Leave him a fucking crack in the door and he’ll break in with a smile and a bit of charm. Robbie would like to say he knows better than to fall for it, but he’s currently lying naked beside him, so.

“What—” Georgie says, pauses. Robbie wants to prod him, but he can see him trying to put the words in order, and pushing won’t make him get it out any faster, Robbie knows from plenty of experience. “So what was that?”

“Fucking,” Robbie says. “You’d think you’d know that, with how much—”

“Robbie,” Georgie says. “You know what I meant.”

Robbie did, yeah, but he doesn’t like how confident Georgie sounds, like he still —

“Let’s just call a spade a spade,” Robbie says.

“What’s the spade we’re referring to here?” Georgie asks. “And don’t just say fucking.”

“Hate fucking, then,” Robbie says.

“I don’t hate you,” Georgie says.

“Don’t worry,” Robbie says. “I hate you enough for both of us.” And himself for being the kind of slackjawed moron who saw Georgie’s angelic fucking face and fell for all the bullshit coming out of his pretty mouth. There’s no shortage of hate to go around here, even if Georgie doesn’t bother to participate.

“This was a bad idea,” Georgie says, sitting up.

“Man, that was so insightful no one would ever guess you’re a college dropout,” Robbie says.

“And you’re not?” Georgie asks.

“Got my fucking BA, thanks,” Robbie says. “So no, I’m not.”

“Wait, really?” Georgie asks. “Fuck, congrats, Robbie, that’s awesome.”

He sounds genuinely happy for Robbie, and it’s — that’s the crack in the door, isn’t it? Georgie always knows where they are.

“Don’t,” Robbie says. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” Georgie says. 

“Don’t fucking — you don’t get to be happy for me,” Robbie says. “Okay?”

“That’s not really something I can control,” Georgie says.

“Then you don’t get to fucking _say_ it,” Robbie says, and something in his voice breaks. He hates himself for that. Hates Georgie, and he doesn’t know if it’s because when his voice cracks Georgie reaches a hand out like he has any right to touch him, or if it’s because he stops moving before his fingers reach Robbie’s arm, pulls the hand back. 

Georgie blows out a breath. “Do you want me to leave?” he asks.

“You do what you want,” Robbie says. It’s statement of fact, not permission, but Georgie takes it as the latter, and something in Robbie, something in him he doesn’t like, is comforted by that the way he would have been if Georgie had touched his arm like he was going to. He’d have shrugged the hand off, he thinks, but maybe not right away. Certainly not as fast as he should.

*

Turns out a broken heart doesn’t fuck with your play if you don’t let it, and also turns out that if you have three consistently awesome seasons, important people start to know your name, drafted or not, start wanting to talk to you.

Some of those people are scouts. Most of them, actually, which makes sense. One of those people is a decently big agent, Curtis Simmonds, who specializes in guys who prefer the NCAA route to getting drafted around the same time they’re getting their high school degree. Simmonds asks to meet with him, talk about his options, and Robbie takes a train out to NYC after his Friday morning class, since Hallsy vouched for him. Robbie’s played with Hallsy two years now, trusts his opinion, and anyway, it can’t hurt anything to go.

It’s Robbie’s last year of draft eligibility, and that’s what Simmonds gets onto practically the second he’s finished shaking Robbie’s hand, going through a spiel he’s clearly done a lot. It’s hard not to tune him out, the clip he’s going at, but Robbie does his best. 

“So we’ll need to send your letter by—”

“I don’t want to,” Robbie interrupts.

“Excuse me?” Simmonds asks.

“I don’t want to opt into the draft,” Robbie says.

“This is your last year of eligibility,” Simmonds says, like Robbie could have somehow missed that.

Washington — a damn good team — is interested. They’ve made it clear he can earn himself a place there, he’s gotten multiple calls from them this season, praising his play. They want him, he thinks. Other teams have expressed interest. He could have his pick if he keeps playing like he’s playing. But more than that, Robbie can’t sit through the draft, hope his name is called, hope it isn’t some team he doesn’t want to play for, city he doesn’t want to live in. Hope against hope Cleveland doesn’t get any bright ideas on how to spruce up Dineen’s play.

The idea of looking at Georgie across the ice already makes him want to throw up. Playing with him again would be —

Robbie couldn’t do it.

“I don’t want to opt in,” Robbie repeats.

Simmonds doesn’t really want to be the agent of a guy who refuses to go to the draft on the basis of some compliments from the Capitals, and honestly, who could blame him? Robbie walks out of that client fired and nowhere he wasn’t before.

He’ll make his own way, or he won’t. He doesn’t know. At least he knows his way sure as fuck won’t involve George Kenneth Dineen.

*

Georgie’s still Georgie, and he inevitably starts to slide towards sleep, lying close enough that Robbie can see the flecks of color in his irises, can see them disappear behind his lids as they fall shut, lashes fanning over his cheeks. This is Robbie’s cue to poke him, since fuck knows he’s not letting Georgie sleep in his bed, but that feels — Robbie doesn’t know. Too fond. Affectionate or something.

“Georgie,” Robbie says, sharp, and Georgie blinks his eyes open and looks at him.

“How long were you fucking around on me?” Robbie asks before he can stop himself. He didn’t even know he was thinking about it until it came out of his mouth. “You wait a day or a week or did I earn a month of good behavior —”

“I didn’t have sex with anyone else until the end,” Georgie says, fully alert again. Robbie guesses going on the defensive will do that. “I fucking swear.”

“What’s ‘the end’?” Robbie asks. “You seriously expect me to believe it was just the once?”

“I’m not saying that,” Georgie says. “I’m—”

“You know what, it doesn’t fucking matter,” Robbie says.

“It does matter,” Georgie says. “It matters to you.”

“Once a cheater, always a cheater,” Robbie says. “How fucking stupid could I be, thinking I’d be any different to you?”

“I was faithful for over a year—”

“I don’t fucking care,” Robbie bites out. “I don’t fucking care if it was once or twice or a hundred fucking times, if it was chicks or dudes, if you did it every fucking second I had my back turned, or—”

“Yes you do,” Georgie interrupts quietly, and the worst thing is he’s right.

“Get the fuck out of my house,” Robbie says.

Georgie looks at him. “Do you want me to tell you?” Georgie asks. 

“I want you to get the fuck out of my house,” Robbie says.

Georgie’s lips press together like he’s holding back from saying something, something Robbie knows he isn’t going to want to hear. 

“Okay,” he says instead, and Robbie’s so relieved. Relieved, and sick with it, with himself, a feeling that only gets worse when Georgie leaves without trying to say anything else, leaves Robbie’s house. And there Robbie stays, marked up with Georgie’s touch, stomach twisting with self-loathing, heavy with that relief and something he can’t identify, and utterly, unmistakably alone.

**Author's Note:**

> And now we confirm present!Robbie is just as alone as he thinks he is as we bid adieu to past!Robbie.


End file.
